


Automatic for the people

by viggorlijah



Series: Twenty-three things that did not happen to John Connor [2]
Category: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-15
Updated: 2011-03-15
Packaged: 2017-10-16 23:59:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/170760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viggorlijah/pseuds/viggorlijah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nothing gets written down.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Automatic for the people

John takes the metal and disappears for a while. When he comes back, it's with a metal lockbox filled with notebooks and pencils, and a camera that shoots with film.

"Nothing gets written down except on paper," he says. He gives the camera to his mother, and she gets down on her knees and starts taking shots slowly, in sequence. They shoot five rolls of film, while John and the metal write down what's on the wall. The metal draws it how it looks, down to the bloody fingerprints, the smear left on the floor. John writes it like a grocery list in neat capitals.

Derek goes back to the house after a while to deal with the body. He's seen that look on Connor's face before. Might as well get things started than wait for whatever's in his head to come out.

He's got rice cooking on the stove when they come in. They're out three sweaters, a winter coat and two duffel bags. They'll also need a new kitchen cleaver. But the table's scrubbed clean and set for food.

John pages through his notes while he eats. Sarah and the metal stare at each other. Derek eats. He's glad he went with beans and rice, not pork stew.

"Serrano Point's important later," John says finally. He pushes his notebook over to Derek. "What else is?"

Derek looks down the list. Most of it he doesn't recognise, but a few of them are familiar. "San Pedro, that's medical research. Jane Chang, I saw her around you. She did something with the tech, communications. She was maybe sixty? She'd be in her thirties now. Holland D, that could be this guy I heard of, down in Texas," and he talks.

He talks until his voice is a rasp. Sarah brings him a cold glass of water, then a hot cup of tea. She sits at the table and listens for some of it, but not at all. Not when he talks about the camps. Or Kyle.

The metal does the dishes, dries them, and puts them away. She leaves and comes back when Derek's trying to remember the shape of the mountain ridge up north, the one where Skynet built their satellite stations, and she puts a stack of photographs next to John. He flips through them, and then calls "Mom," softly.

Derek stares at the map. The lines are blue and green and brown, red roads winding through. The world is known here, a thousand towns written down. This is where he met Jesse for the first time, this is where Martin ran. The distances are only a few fingerwidths apart. He could cover all his future up with his hand.

"That's all of it," John says. Sarah and the metal flank him, both of them studying the photographs laid out in a grid. Their heads are cocked the same, their hands touching the table, just below where the bloody prints are, flat and glossy. "Destroy it."

"There are chemicals that can remove the blood. However, the absence of the blood will remain."

"Burn it," Sarah says. She looks around the kitchen, and then at John, and then the map, Derek's hands still restlessly smoothing it down. "We have places to go now."

Later, a lot later, sitting in a shack in a town outside Texas, with the heat sullen and wet, and watching John Connor take apart metal and put it back together, the bandage on his arm from a bullet by a man who might one day be Holland D, Derek remembers the quiet of that house.

It had bookshelves and pictures on walls, a comfortable sofa. The stove in the kitchen was nearly new, and there had been a dishwasher and a dryer. Flowers in the yard, and on the wall at the top of the stairs, faded pencil marks with dates on them and children's names.

"I'm sorry we couldn't stay in the house," he tells John suddenly.

John glances at him then back at the metal on his lap. "Which house?"

"The one in Laurel Drive. It was nice."

John shrugs. "It was temporary. They all are."

Derek lived in the house he'd been born in, in 1995. He's driven past it a couple of times. There's a tree in the yard he leans his bike against, a tyre swing hanging off it. There's a mailbox he helped his dad put up, flowers in pots that his mother sets out.

It had bookshelves and pictures on walls, a comfortable sofa. He lived there until Judgement Day.

Sometimes, when he looks at John Connor, he thinks about setting the notebooks on fire instead. Then he takes one out and goes over them again, although he knows them by heart now.

They're off to Georgia next. Savannah, Georgia, to find someone called John Henry.


End file.
